Moreover, even if everything in the VIS is true, so what? Consider the crime of murder. Sure there are people who might appear to have had more value to society than others, their deaths felt more keenly. But murder is about the interruption of that person's life — who knows what path he might have taken. The vctim who seemed like a saint might have fallen on hard times six months down the road, and in desperation, robbed a bank and killed an innocent bystander. The victim who had alienated his family and co-workers and neighbours might have had, six months down the road, a change of heart worthy of Ebenezer Scrooge, and donated all his hoarded wealth to a hospital to fund a new wing.

Or not.

Problem is, we don't know, so the law, until recently, avoided the sticky situation of estimating the value of a person's life. All lives are equally worthy of protection under the law. All those who take a life face equal punishment as a result.

Now we subject crime victims to the indignity of having to convince the court that they or their lost loved ones are more worthy of consideration during sentencing. Why should I have to jump through this hoop? I should be able to sit quietly, say nothing, and expect the court to issue a sentence against the person who wronged me and the community at large, and expect that justice, blind and fair, be meted out.

It is the math behind it that reveals the twisted logic. Imagine the crime X earns you sentence Y, all things being equal. But because of a particularly poignant VIS, the criminal earns Y+5. This is allowed when Y+5 falls within the range of sentences allowed, though at the high end. Now turn it around. Let Z equal Y+5. Crime X has the potential of earning a sentence of Z. But if the victim doesn't submit a compelling VIS, you end up with a sentence of Z-5.

What if the victim was a real jerk?

Which brings us back to the gag at the top of this piece. Drebin commits two counts of vehicular manslaughter. But in terms of a VIS, society would seem to be better off without these two people around. His guilt is not merely mitigated, it is actually inverted completely, and his punishment is replaced with adulation and an award.

Someone would argue that the humour is in that it takes the notion of the VIS to an absurd extreme for the sake of a laugh. But what these people are missing is that whenever you see a joke based on taking some notion to an "absurd extreme", it is more often than not an absurd notion to begin with. The extreme treatment merely highlights the absurdity that is already there; it does not manufacture it.

[Originally posted at Angry in the Great White North]